For a number of reasons there is currently a great deal of interest in the properties of dental pulp cells. First, pulp cells often die following vital pulp therapies. Understanding how this death occurs and how it may be prevented is important for improving the success rate of these procedures. Second, dental pulp cells can differentiate into odontoblasts and produce reparative dentin. Because of this property the use of growth factors to stimulate odontoblast differentiation has been proposed as a replacement, or adjunct therapy, to the use of calcium hydroxide in stimulating reparative dentin formation following vital pulp therapy. Third, the potential exists to use these cells to re-grow dental pulp, or even entire teeth. However, a greater understanding of the role of growth factors in the proliferation and differentiation of pulp cells, as well as how the growth factors alter the pulp cell response to dental materials, will be required before the full potential of growth factor induced pulp cell differentiation can be achieved. The hypothesis to be tested is that an ideal combination of growth factor treatment and dental material restoration can be found for applications involving exposed dental pulp. Experiments are designed to characterize in detail the effects of multiple growth factors known to have effects on human dental pulp cell growth in culture. The effects of dental materials that come in direct contact with pulp cells, or from which substances may be leached and come in contact with pulp cells, will be tested for toxicity on the growth factor treated cells. We will test the effects of the growth factors: bone morphogenic peptide-2,4,6 (BMP-2,4,6), epidermal growth factor (EGF), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), and transforming growth factor-21,3 (TGF- 21,3) on dental pulp cells to determine if they alter the cell differentiation, replication, and sensitivity to the toxicity of dental materials. The information provided by these studies will provide a framework for more selective testing of growth factors in vivo and eventually in humans. [unreadable] [unreadable] PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: When dental pulp is exposed, whether due to trauma or rapidly progressing carries, the pulp cells often die leading to either extraction or endodontic therapy. As a method of maintaining the viability of these cells we are proposing studying the effects of naturally occurring substances called growth factors on dental pulp cells. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]